In developing the subject of this paper, “American Economic Growth before 1840,” I shall, relying for the most part on familiar materials, propose the hypothesis that economic growth per capita in the thirteen colonies of Britain in America advanced at a relatively rapid rate from about 1710 to 1775.1 shall also suggest that the level of living remained relatively low in these colonies as late as about 1710 and that for the new nation output per capita over the years 1775 to 1840 improved slowly if at all.

The honorable program chairman has appended to my paper a title I had not entirely foreseen, and this drove me to modify my line to some extent. I had toyed with the idea of taking a long look at a short period in the fifteenth century, when the Genoese did all they could to adjust to shrinking opportunities and to find new markets in the place of those they were losing. This will still take about one half of my time, if only because it dovetails with the paper of Harry Miskimin. But if Genoa has to be considered as a test case for market expansion, we cannot restrict ourselves to the years when the going was not so good.

That the Black Death of 1348–1349 disrupted the economies of Europe during the later middle ages is not open to doubt. That the economic effects of the plague varied from sector to sector is perhaps equally indubitable. The diversity of its impact upon various economic sectors reveals itself both in contemporary evidence and in the fiery controversies generated by modern economic historians, each basing his argument on conflicting statistics or inferences drawn, often without careful regard, from disparate sectors. It is thus not accidental that even the most cursory review of the literature concerning the period after the plague will unearth a surprising lack of agreement among the specialists.

This paper is the latest contribution to the now considerable literature dealing with the putative depression in the later middle ages. In particular, Harry Miskimin's present monetary analysis is an extension of the recent exchange in the pages of the Economic History Review, involving him and his colleague, Robert Lopez, and their dissentient, Carlo Cipolla. The striking characteristic of this stimulating reconstruction is the reconciliation of some of the seemingly inconsistent or dissonant data adduced by previous writers. While every effort to clarify the operative factors and to establish cause and effect relationships in this disputed subject of Renaissance economic patterns is gratefully received, and while I personally am inclined toward the “depressionist” or at least “stagnationist” position in the current controversy, I am regretfully not entirely satisfied with the argument of this paper. My unease can be explained in part and, I would hope, will be communicated, by a few observations relating to the graphs which illustrate the text.

The relative position of the Chesapeake in the economy of the thirteen colonies before the American Revolution is a matter of some ambiguity. On the one hand, we are traditionally taught to view Virginia and Maryland as somewhat backward compared to their northern neighbors, particularly in their lack of large towns and of those forms of a centralized market economy commonly based upon urban commercial centers. On the other hand, simple quantitative measurement seems to indicate that they were among the most highly developed of the colonies. Virginia was the most populous of all, and even Maryland had more inhabitants than New York. If between them they were to account for about 30 per cent of the population of the thirteen colonies on the eve of the Revolution, they were even more strikingly to account for close to 50 percent of colonial exports to England. If we add in oft-neglected Scotland as a recipient, then the Chesapeake's share of exports to Great Britain passes 60 per cent. If we had chosen to make our measurements as of a generation earlier, then the Chesapeake's share of colonial exports would have been even higher.

The material progress of an area, large or small, depends upon its adaptability in facing up to the continuous pressures exerted the world economy. What determines such flexibility remains as yet, despite recent research on this matter, an open question. This investigation of the Aachen-area woolen trades provides no new answer. All it pretends to do is to stress those strategic aspects of the institutional setting which, by their influence upon demand and supply conditions, point to some of the issues that might have relevance for an understanding of this important problem.

Disagreement on the state of the economic health of the new nation has persisted since contemporary observers disputed over the changes wrought by the end of the War for Inpendence. In recent years, diagnosis has ranged from the gloomy picture of commercial depression painted by Curtis Nettels to the rather different evaluation of Merrill Jensen, who found the period “one of extraordinary economic growth.”

The wars which raged almost continuously from 1792 to 1815 and which are generally, but not quite properly, called in English the Napoleonic wars, are the longest period of warfare which Europe has known since the early eighteenth century, and as they took place at a crucial stage of economic development, when the Industrial Revolution had just taken off in England and when its preliminary stirrings were showing in various places of the Continent, their impact upon the growth of industry in Continental Europe was quite serious. Unlike the twentieth-century world wars, the Napoleonic wars were not marked by large-scale physical destruction; though the productive potential of some towns or districts suffered from military operations or civil disturbances, such destruction was quite limited in space and time. On the other hand, most European countries suffered during the wars from bouts of paper-money inflation, which had undoubtedly serious consequences—especially in France during the Revolution, when the working capital of many merchants and manufacturers was destroyed through the combination of a sharp rise in their costs, of price control under the maximum, and of payment of government orders in depreciated assignats. Also, the diversion of resources to military purposes and the heavy burden of taxation and exactions must not be underestimated.

Written history abounds with colorful generalizations which can often be regarded as immovable and undying monuments to the truth. Stately, memorable, unself-conscious, their smooth surfaces and clean lines are unmarred by the asymmetry of qualification. Particularly impressive are those memorials which stand majestically on pedestals of aggregate quantitative evidence. Decomposition is then akin to deformation; iconoclasm becomes a species of philistinism. Nonetheless, although history may be considered a type of art, it is not pop art. The melancholy task of critical destruction is part of the historian's mandate.

The relationship between long-term trends in foreign trade and long-term trends in income has long been a source of fascinating speculation for scholars. As early as 1821, Robert Torrens observed that “as the several nations of the world advance in wealth and population, the commercial intercourse between them must gradually become less important and beneficial.” He believed that trade was founded on the exchange of manufactures for foodstuffs and materials; as land became scarcer as a result of population growth, the basis for trade would disappear.